


colour in your hands

by helahler



Category: Jessica Jones (TV)
Genre: Character Study, Hurt/Comfort, M/M, Mind Control Aftermath & Recovery, Missing Scenes, Post-Finale
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-12-07
Updated: 2015-12-07
Packaged: 2018-05-05 13:41:00
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,869
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/5377310
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/helahler/pseuds/helahler
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>“<i>Mind control</i>?” Luke says dubiously, hotdog frozen mid-way to his mouth. </p><p>Malcolm frowns. “Look, if you’re going to be like that--” </p><p>“Just -- give me a minute, alright,” Luke tries to placate, taking a bite of his hotdog and thinking it through as he chews. <i>Okay. Mind control. Got it. </i></p><p> </p><p>Or: three times mind-control was a thing that existed in Luke's life, and Malcolm was there to talk him through it.</p>
            </blockquote>





	colour in your hands

**One:**

“Look, just keep your distance, alright? Or I’m gonna have to kick your ass,” says the guy,  pushing past Jessica to stand between her and Luke, over-protective in a way that would be laughable if not spoken with such aggressive seriousness. Luke instead chooses to reply with a disparaging frown because for one, the guy’s tiny, and two, he looks like a stiff wind would blow him over.

Whatever response the guy’s about to make gets cut off by Jessica, who ushers him out of the doorway and back to his own apartment several doors down with a few short words about some “Kilgrave”, Luke’s question about which goes unanswered. Doesn’t matter; he has more important things to focus on, like the reason he came here in the first place. He pushes the vague mystery of Jones’ weird neighbour to the back of his mind.

And there the neighbour would have stayed, if not for his weird persistence in making it clear that Luke should stay away from Jessica, as if Luke would have reached out to her without a reason for it. Luke leaves Jessica’s apartment, goes downstairs, is about to get on his bike and go when he notices the over-protective neighbour approaching out of the corner of his eye. _Might as well get this over with now_ , Luke thinks, sitting back and waiting for the oncoming jealous outburst.

So it’s a little unexpected when the guy takes a whole different tack.

“Whatever your issue is, just don’t take it out on her, alright?” the neighbour says, “she’s been through hell and saved me from the same,” which makes Luke take a mental step back, assessing: this sounds like a piece of the mystery that is Jessica Jones, and it’s part curiosity, part certainty that she wouldn’t tell him if he asked, that makes Luke ask, “‘Hell’ got anything to do with this Kilgrave I keep hearing about?”

The neighbour hesitates, and his gaze turns from focused to appraising. After a long moment, he nods.

“I’m Malcolm. I’m her neighbour,” he says. He gestures with his hand, begins to walk. “Come on. Let’s talk.”   

\-----

“ _Mind control_?” Luke says dubiously, hot-dog frozen mid-way to his mouth.

“Look, if you’re going to be like that--” Malcolm starts, frowning.

“Just -- give me a minute, alright,” Luke tries to placate, taking a bite of his hot-dog and thinking it through as he chews. _Okay. Mind control. Got it._

“Sure,” says Malcolm, fiddling with the sugar packets sitting on the table between them. He takes them out of their container, lines them up in a row, shuffles them around, puts them back, takes them out again, lines them up again. Luke watches him repeat the process a few times before putting his food down and clearing his throat, nodding a little, encouraging: _go on._

“It’s difficult to -- you can’t understand what it’s like. Not until it happens to you,” Malcolm says slowly, his nails worrying at one of the packets until it rips and sugar spills out across the table. “It’s like -- he tells you to do something, and suddenly nothing else matters; just that one thing. And he makes you want it. The wanting was the worst part,” he stops, takes a breath, carries on, “knowing that you don’t want to do it but knowing that you _do_ , too, and it doesn’t matter anyway because you can’t stop either way, not until he lets you.”

“Jesus,” Luke murmurs, unable to think of anything beyond that, his food already lying forgotten.

Malcolm looks up from the table, looks Luke in the eye. “He has the power to have complete control over everything you say or do or think. Now imagine that’s your life. He had me for -- weeks, I think, and look at me now.”

Luke does: takes in Malcolm’s shaking hands and his exhaustion-bruised eyes and his sallow, sickly skin; he’s kind of a mess. But his voice is steady. And he’s here now, despite his initial suspicion that Luke had been under Kilgrave’s influence. And that counts for something.  

Which Luke is about to point out, except that Malcolm isn’t finished. “He had Jessica for months,” he says plainly; he doesn’t need to say more for Luke to understand: _this is why she is the way she is_. Malcolm goes on, “I know she wouldn’t want me to tell you, but. You needed to know.” He sits back, rubbing his eyes with his knuckles.

“Thank you,” Luke says, pouring all the warmth and sincerity he can into those two small words, because he can appreciate how hard it must have been for Malcolm to tell him. “I mean it.” 

Malcolm looks up from where he’s wiping the sugar off the table and putting the rest of the packets neatly back into the container. He nods.

“Doesn’t mean I won’t kick your ass if you hurt her,” Malcolm says, only half-serious this time.

“Yeah, okay,” Luke says. “We’ll see.”  

  


**Two:**

The last thing he remembers is his hands around Jessica’s neck and the cold metal of the gun pressed against his jaw and the burning thrum in his veins because he needs to kill her needs to end her needs to destroy her. The last thought he has is blurred, desperate: _do it do it please don’t let me kill you_ and then she pulls the trigger and there’s a white-hot burst of pain before everything goes black.

\----

It’s not like being unconscious. More like being deep underwater, looking up at a surface too far out of reach. There’s pain, dulled by distance, and a slow dawning panic as he realises he can’t move, can’t open his eyes. Dimly he senses movement; he’s being moved. Time shudders by. He tries to focus on something: the soft weight on his chest, a voice, someone’s speaking, “--pictured a future with--” which sounds like Jessica but not, and it doesn’t matter anyway because before he can follow the thread it slips away and he can feel himself slipping along with it. He sinks deeper; time passes. Then there’s a new voice, female, unfamiliar, followed by another, familiar -- Malcolm? -- enough to spark his awareness:  footsteps, more talking, the scrape of a chair. The warmth of a hand on his wrist.

“It’s okay, Luke,” Malcolm says quietly. “Take your time; I’m right here. Not going anywhere.”

 _Okay_ , Luke thinks, reaching for the steady rhythm of Malcolm’s voice -- he’s talking, still, mindless words of comfort, warmth that Luke can anchor himself to. _Okay_ , he thinks again, and begins the long slow drift back to wakefulness; a tide slowly rolling into shore.

 

 

**Three:**

He fills the tank on his bike, packs everything up. Opens Jessica’s contact in his phone, thinks about calling, doesn’t. He drives out of the city. Doesn’t look back.

\-----

He travels. It feels good to get away for a while, the steady repetitive thrum of the bike beneath him and the wind on his face providing a welcome distraction from the dull aching loss of his last remaining physical traces of Reva and the snarled tangle of anger and guilt and confusion Kilgrave left him with. By the third week, though, and all the distance that provides, he begins to recognise that that’s all this is: a distraction. He has to go back eventually.

At the end of the fourth week, he does.

He drives back into the city, parks the bike, is heading towards his usual coffee spot when he spots the poster pinned up on the side of a street light. It’s surrounded by a bunch of other various signs and advertisements, all garish enough that he doesn’t know what it is about this one that catches his attention -- maybe the words “survivors” and “group” -- but when he looks closer there’s a short description, and a small smiling picture of Malcolm. Luke checks the address and the dates of the meetings, one of which is today, in fifteen minutes time, in a community centre across town.

He skips the coffee.

\------

In his head Luke pictured this as some small-time affair, a little tentative, a little awkward. So it’s unexpected when he arrives, a few minutes late, to a hall filled with rows of people, all looking towards the stage; there must be dozens of them. Some look tearful, some angry, some intently taking notes. Luke sidles in, eases himself into an empty chair at the end of a row, looks at the person on stage: it’s Malcolm.

He looks -- better, Luke thinks. Healthy. Happy, even, judging by the gentle smile on his face and the warmth in his voice. He’s a good speaker. It makes sense; the best person to help guide others through dealing with an encounter with Kilgrave is someone who knows what it’s like, who’s been through the worst of it, and Malcolm pretty solidly fits that bill. His eyes are drifting across the crowd, and when they fall on Luke Malcolm pauses, for a moment, surprised, before he recovers and continuing on.    

After a few more minutes of speaking Malcolm steps down of the stage and the audience disperses into small groups, talking amongst themselve. Some head over to Malcolm, talking with him one to one. Luke sits, waits, catching snatches of conversation. From what he hears, this whole thing seems to be good for people struggling to come to terms with what happened to them; talking through it with other people who have gone through the same thing seems to help, seems to give validation to their feelings of guilt and fear and frustration in a way that seeing a doctor, or a therapist, or someone trained to deal with medical-related issues can’t, because the thing that happened to them can’t be explained or quantified in scientific terms.

Luke is pulled from his thoughts by the warmth of a body dropping into the seat next to his.

“That was pretty good,” he says.

“You think?” says Malcolm. “Still feels weird to me. But -- it seems to help them, so.” He looks over at Luke, glancing at his jaw, where the bullet struck. “You doing okay?”

“I’m okay,” Luke replies, thumb going to the place where the scar should be, a little self-conscious. “Went away for a few weeks. Needed some time.”

Malcolm nods in understanding. They lapse into comfortable silence for a while, just sitting, letting the sounds of the surrounding people wash over them. It’s nice to be around people again.   

“How is she?” Luke says, eventually. 

“She’s -- okay. Doing better, I think,” Malcolm answers. “But you should ask her yourself.”

Luke makes a noncommittal noise.

“Look, I know she shot you in the head and all,” Malcolm starts, lowering his voice so his words are only for Luke’s ears. 

“It’s not that,” Luke interrupts. He sighs. “It’s -- difficult to explain.”

“Well,” Malcolm says after a moment, “you know I’m here if you want to talk about it. Meetings are every Sunday, three ‘til four. And, um,” he reaches into his pocket, takes out a piece of paper and a pen, scribbles something on it, hands it over, “here’s my number. Just in case.”

“Just in case,” Luke repeats, smiling a little. Malcolm smiles back.

 

END

 

**Author's Note:**

> let me know what you thought; feedback is really appreciated! also, sorry for the british-isms; if they're really jarring let me know. 
> 
> had a few ideas for these two the last few days, but it wasn't until this morning when i saw [this](http://hansbekhart.tumblr.com/post/134697149643/a-social-construct-hansbekhart) that i actually sat down and tried to write something properly - i really liked their dynamic in the show, or what little of it we saw, anyway; i wish there'd been more of these two and less of kilgrave + simpson, but hey, i guess that's what fanfic is for! 
> 
> title from [this](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=v7ydU5jQUQY) which for me has always been a post-winter soldier bucky song but i think applies here pretty well.
> 
> come bug me about these two or my other WIPs on [tumblr!](http://helahler.tumblr.com/) ([formerly](http://neenaroo.tumblr.com))


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